


Desperate Ain't Lonely

by inalasahl



Category: Firefly, Serenity (2005)
Genre: F/M, Oblivious, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-18
Updated: 2007-07-18
Packaged: 2017-10-07 20:14:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inalasahl/pseuds/inalasahl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Desperate ain't lonely, but lonely ain't desperate neither. Mal's been both and none of it means a damn thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Desperate Ain't Lonely

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dirty diana](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=dirty+diana).



> Original written as comment fic off of a lyric/pairing prompt from dirty diana. Unbetaed.

> So I try not to drink  
> Cause if I sit and think I'll go crazy  
> Cause desperate ain't lonely  
> You know I've been had  
> — Whiskeytown "Desperate Ain't Lonely,"

* * *

They've been stuck in trenches waiting on orders for the better part of a month. Idle hands are the devil's playground, his ma always said. Museveni and Green come back from watch with their clothes buttoned wrong, but it ain't Mal's place to say anything when Lieutenant Baker's got eyes just like everyone else. Even the latrine don't offer privacy; Mal's pants have been too tight in front off and on for what seems like days. Baker's eyes flick just a bit, but he goes back to his coffee. "Sarge," Alleyne begins.

"We won't put 'em on watch together again," Mal whispers back. "Your deal," he says, handing his cards over to her, ignoring the rough prickle of her palm. The sun high overhead makes sweat well up on his face and the back of his neck. Alleyne talks about growing up on a ship, skimming through the black, always a new planet or moon around the corner. "Sounds nice," he says and means it, letting her voice wash over him like a cool creek on bare feet. Desperate ain't lonely, he thinks.

Alleyne's name is Zoe, Mal knows. It's on her tags, along with her blood type. Mal don't understand it, but the gorram supply lines are broken again. When he takes Green, Feng and Museveni with him on the raid he remembers to grab a few pints of A Neg on their way out.

* * *

Greenleaf's built up enough to have three ports, but Beaumonde's a bit more civilized. Zoe favors Greenleaf, but Mal ain't so sure. Look before you leap, Mal's ma always said.

"More buyers," Zoe says. "Better prices. Might get done quickly enough for Wash and I to see a preacher."

Later on, Mal holds the last of the ice to his face and thinks Zoe could have just said, "Captain, I do not believe the terms of my employment allow you to forbid me to marry."

"I make my own decisions, Captain," is what she says instead.

He's not going to have a shot of whiskey. They've got a job tomorrow. He's got to figure out which papers will pass inspection. He's got to remove the Alliance seals from the packing crates. He's got to — He stands up and gets to work. He'll go crazy if he sits around thinking. They've got a job to do.

Mal never hires a cook after all, and Wash's bunk remains hopefully empty until the day Mal bribes Jayne into hiring on.

* * *

Mal likes pretty and sarcastic on a woman, and Inara is both those things. She ties him up in knots, and he wakes for days on end with his hand wrapped around his cock. If the dreams aren't all about Inara, well, dreams never make any sense anyway. He would never, not with Kaylee, not with River, not with —

Sweat rolls down Zoe's neck as they stack crates in the cargo bay. The words are out before he even realizes he was thinking it. "May I kiss you?" he blurts.

A line forms between her brows. "You feeling all right, sir?"

"Nevermind," he mutters, rubbing the back of his neck and shaking his head.

Zoe nods, flashing him a look of concern, before she turns away to pick up another crate.

Mal sits right down meek as a lamb so Simon can take his temperature when the doctor checks on him at Zoe's request.

He goes to Inara's shuttle ready to beg, but she's already heard the story. "Mal," she says gently. "Teasing can feel an awful lot like flirting, especially when someone is trying to sublimate — bury —"

"I don't think of you as a sister," he snaps.

"You don't think of her as one either."

No fool like an old fool, his ma always said. She said a lot of things when she was raising him up to be a man, and he knows exactly what she'd think of words like "widow" and "employer." Lonely ain't desperate, and even if it was — his ma would call it taking advantage.

* * *

Zoe finds him in the mess, brooding at a cup of tea. "Simon said you're not sick. Inara said you were. Also, crazy, stubborn, annoying, puritanical —"

"I get it," he groans, knowing his cheeks are getting red. There's a long silence and then Zoe lays a cloth full of ice down in warning.

"You should have told me. I make my own decisions, Mal."

"We ain't been that to each other," he says.

She slides the cloth closer to him. "Love hasn't got rules, Mal, or just one way it has to be."

* * *

Later in his bunk, Mal says please as her hands slide over him. "Needed this," she pants, lips curving into a grin. They're wild in their falls, barely enough energy to pull the covers up as their eyes close.

His ma said a lot of things, he thinks, as his leg tangles up with Zoe's. She also lived alone.

Fin


End file.
